works of wanderlust

retro gamer, handheld

I can’t even tell you how many times in the last twenty years I have found myself dabbling in retro game consoles.

I have multiple computers with emulator software.

I have a small stack of those mini consoles they sold there for a while, the ones that looked like shrunken versions of the originals.

I have multiple raspberry pi computers notoriously great at running retro game emulators.

I even have a generic usb controller purchased almost one hundred percent for the reason that I wanted to play old games on my computer.

And I have a couple of mostly-legally obtained software “roms” of some of of my childhood favourites.

Now, I broke down, and bought one of those little stupidly-powerful little handheld consoles that have proliferated the internet in the last couple years.

If you haven’t heard of those yet, basically–well, since computer processors are so cheap and fast, and high quality little screens are so bright and inexpensive, and the software that runs it all is essentially a lite version of some linux distro, wrapped into a neat little package one can essentially buy a handheld computer that plays retro games (all the way up to the PS2 console generation-ish) for about fifty bucks.

Fifty bucks!

Like. I can’t even buy a new PS5 game for that price. And here I’ve got myself a cheap little new toy that I can toss a couple of those aforementioned roms onto and then sit and play great looking games on my couch… for fifty bucks.

They are not, of course, for the feint of heart. The little system arrived in a cheap little box, with a budget-value memory card, and an instruction booklet that was about one tenth the length of this blog post.

I have some experience with both linux and emulators, so I was able to poke around and get the system working mostly how I like it. But I can see how someone less techie could struggle and–um–ONE STAR! But I like gadgets, so this is just another one of those things that I can dig into, figure out, and make it work.

And of course, play some retro games.

April 21, 2025
undeleted

To be fair, I didn’t actually read the article.

In these days of click-bait headlines it is equally likely that any given bit of tripe posted in traditional media is some too-clever journalist writing a bit of sarcastic parody humor prefixed by an all-too-clever title to draw in the crowds who are almost certainly looking for some bit of legitimate-seeming news to validate their screwball wacky viewpoints. The author then typically tries to write some clever well-actuallies… but then who actuallies need the article when most of us never read past the headline anyhow?

So I didn’t read it. Couldn’t read it. At least not without forking out money for a subscription. So, won’t read it. Can’t read it. Don’t need to read it.

The headline was “Go Delete Yourself from the Internet. Seriously, Here’s How” from the Wall Street Journal.

And in this day and age of terrible tech advice abounding I’m pretty sure this was not parody. It might have been well-meaning. It might have even been sensible. But it was probably not good advice.

Today is a day I have marked in my calendar as my “blogiversay” which is twenty-four years to the date of when I made my first blog post on my first blog. I didn’t put it into my calendar until years later when I noticed that the first post in the archives of the blog was, and would for a long time be, April 20, 2001.

And then one day I deleted myself from the Internet. Seriously.

There were a lot of good reasons to have done it. I was, what? Twenty-four when I first posted. I had just moved out of a backwards little life in a backwards little city (which you can ready-aim-fire at me for being judgemental but you could easily google the name of said city and you’d be greeted with a lot of right-wing, nationalistic, hyper-religious news-adjacent references that would vouch for my then and current opinion of the place.) I had a lot of growing to do, and I did a lot of said growing right there live on that blog, sixteen years worth. A lot of that blogging, those growing and changing opinions, may not have aged well, and good or bad, I don’t care to read and edit two million words of my blathering personal blog writing for any reason.

So I deleted myself. I deleted myself when I got a semi-public job. I deleted myself when I started managing people, particularly a few stubborn ones who didn’t like me, and I deleted myself when it started scraping up against the gentle opposition of my peers.

But here we are in 2025 and there are suddenly and realistically a lot of reasons to undelete oneself from the internet. There are a lot of reasons to hold one’s ground and push back against the very idea of ceding this digital space.

Mostly? There is a vacuum that will exist in the space where each person deletes themselves from the internet and that vacuum would almost instantly be filled by something else. Something bad.

Maybe some terrible AI content will slurp into the vacuum.

Perhaps what people will see will instead just be more terrible influencer content and the tidal wave of stealthy and deceptive advertising.

Or worst, and what I fear the most, is that the vacuum will be filled by the relentless creeping onslaught of political propaganda and the opinions (agree with me or not) which are increasingly anti-fact, anti-science, anti-intellectual, and anti-reality. I fear the space will just get filled with more lies, more manipulation, and more noise designed to overwhelm and crush what little remains of these fragments of freedom and democracy to which we cling.

April 20, 2001 was a few months before 9/11, a day which for reasons beyond the obvious changed the trajectory of western civilization. On that day we went from an optimistic society progressing towards something special and we collectively did a u-turn into fear and suspicion and surrendering our rights for the illusion of slightly more safety. Now, arguably, many of those rights have been gone for a generation, nearly twenty-four years gone, and yet we all feel less safe than ever. What are terrible trade. What a terrible decision we all made together.

Right now, a big part of me feel like that happened so easily because we deleted ourselves from the conversation. Deleted ourselves from reality, from truth, from the fight, from purpose, from everything. We deleted ourself from the internet, a great big town square where we should all be shouting and having a voice, arguing and making better choices for us all. We deleted ourselves and turned over our voices to corporate social media, to algorithms, to AI, to billionaires who claim that they are guardians of that voice but who only put it in chains.

We deleted ourselves and surrendered.

I am undeleting myself. This stupid little resurrected blog is the beginning of that effort. I am trying to reclaim my voice, small and unpracticed as it is.

Undeleted.

You next. Stay tuned.

April 20, 2025
Spring Runoff

I had this grand plan about ramping up my mileage for spring.

Not that it was an orginal plan. Same plan as every year, in fact. Arguably, not so much a plan as a routine.

Each year around this time I’ve been “streaking” — but in the running, way, as in trying to run a minimum distance each day. Setting a running streak. Three weeks or maybe even a month of consecutive running. Kicking off April first with a daily challenge to myself to say, um, how many days can I lace up in a row? What kind of distance can I chalk up? How often do I want to do sports laundry this month?

But then I got sick.

Perfectly, poorly-timed, sick. April first, just as we got back from a mini-vacay to the coast, I got off the plane with a chest cold of the kind where running seems to make it worse.

How does that go again? Neck up, run about. Neck down, rest it out.

This was a neck down cold. Chest coughy-phlegmy-x-ray-worthy sick.

I’m like 97% better. And better enough to do some short, slower runs with the crew now that spring is in full swing. Not better enough to attempt that streak, yet.

We ran our regular Thursday meet up last night and slogged off a six klick semi-trail run through the trying-to-bud-out tree canopy, the light and shadows playing with our senses in that way that only happens in the shoulder seasons. I wore shorts, and only had one coughing fit. I guess that’s a good thing.

April 18, 2025
Tracks in the Mud

There were imprints of multiple bike tire treads in the dried mud.

This particular corner is not exactly technical, but it would inevitably pose a challenge for a novice off-road cyclist. The hairpin turn is at the lowest point of a narrow runoff trench, a kind of wrinkle in the landscape where water might escape down into the valley-proper but which now, in the late spring, was barely damp. The hairpin turn is to be found at the lowest point in a narrow trench down which the trail skirts a rapid descent and counterpart ascent leading to or from, depending on one’s perspective, the hairpin turn in question. That is to say, the hypothetical adventure cyclist may round a corner on the path and encounter a descending hill tracing down along the side of the trench and then at the bottom of the hill be made to take a sharp turn before ascending back up the far side of said trench to resume their slog through the river valley trail. There is no other way around, save for taking a completely and altogether different path.

There were imprints in the dried mud indicating that this represents a common scenario.

But I was on foot.

I rounded the corner and shortened my stride to accommodate the fifteen meters of downward grade, my hand instinctively brushing up towards the branches of the nearby trees as if I should, could, would grab a bit of the foliage if my feet slipped on a bit of loose dirt and knocked me off balance.

I didn’t fall. Instead I found myself at the bottom of the hill down which I had just walked and the bottom of a second hill I was destined to climb and standing at a sharp hairpin corner down low in a wrinkle in the landscape looking towards the dried mud where a number of dried bike tire tread tracks had hardened into their familiar waffle-print patterns.

It was quiet. Unnervingly quiet.

The trail running in and through the landscape here, a hundred or so meters into the woods and away from the suburban neighbourhoods nearby, was already insulated from the usual hum of sound from the city. But somehow, the little rent in the path, this dip and turn and wrinkle was like descending between two soundproofing berms and completely shutting out whatever remaining noise had penetrated the woods. Here, I might just have found one of the quietest places in the city.

The sunlight pinched down between the scraggly poplars. The air carried the heavy scent of the spring mulch rotting on the forest floor. The wind stirred now and then, just a trivial gust and enough to stir the newly budded leaves glowing that radiant green of freshly popped foliage.

One path. Uncountable tread tracks traced through the dried mud. And me, on foot, looking down at the silent hairpin turn a hundred meters from civilization.

For every person who descended into this trench there was one journey, but an infinite variety of paths. No one who entered this turn came into it at the same angle, speed or trajectory, and likewise, no one left it alike any other. Each path was unique. Each journey was personal.

I stepped past the dried tread tracks, glimpsing over my shoulder through the rift in space I had just traversed. That was mine. And I climbed back up the other side of the trail, back up and out of the wrinkle in the landscape, and tried to figure out exactly where I had ended up.

April 16, 2025
social games

I spent nearly a decade feeding the massive social media networks like Facebook and Instagram with my creative output.

What did it get me?

I could tell you that I learned some skills in social media engagement, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration because an invisible algorithm did most of the work.

I could tell you that it gave me an excuse to write and create, but that would be something of a cop out because one shouldn’t need such excuses to practice one’s craft.

I could tell you that it gave me an audience, but honestly I could have currated an email list of my friends and family and had nearly as many eyes to see what I made.

What it really did was create value for someone else.

What the social media networks never admit is that the house is only one guaranteed to win, and it’s always their house. Sure, some folks hit a jackpot and walk out richer and wiser, but most of us spend our creative chips and they vanish into the coffers of the app or network.

I can’t tell you that you shouldn’t play the social media game, but I can suggest that there are far fewer winners there than there are the rest of us. And I can tell you that I have lately been, and will continue to be, putting more effort into building my own (much smaller and less social) networks with my creative energies.

I wrote the first half of this post as a professional reflection on social media itself and maybe as a bit of shrouded advice about starting your own blog. But the truth is I’m feeling a little more than bitter about the whole thing. In fact feel more than a bit taken by these systems. Conned. Duped. Played. As have almost all of us.

I remember participating in the early forum sites. Usenet, in particular, was really pretty much a crude ancestor of Facebook or Reddit: alt.movies.obsessive the joke went. But there was never any pretense that we were doing anything besides chatting with passing strangers, ghosts in the night, words on a screen that we knew were some other person but that person maintained a reputation that was as transient as the dial up connection.

Obligatory Simpsons reference? Check out Radioactive Man Issue #42 for more explanation, huh?

What we really did with the social media networks was recreate fame. We invented a way for people to be famous online, and if they were already famous offline to milk that fame even more online. The social networks invented the online celebrity: the influencer, so now rather than clambering to become a tv star or a movie a-lister, anyone with a smartphone, anyone posting anything, anyone participating was really just auditioning for the i-list.

That was the whole game: the whole point of creating from that moment on was to build a following, become noticed, attract clicks, and generate revenue from it all. The new dream: and we all dreamed that dream because participating was playing was dreaming.

Even now, you may be reading this going: well, what’s the point then? Why are YOU writing a blog if not to have people read it, if not to create content that persists and, in playing all that, rolls the dice on internet celebrity?

I don’t know. I don’t know how to break free of that idea other than to do what I have been inclined to do from the beginning: share for the love and zen of sharing, and simply hope that it is enough to exist in a quiet corner of this infinite internet casino avoiding putting any more tokens into the house than needed to keep from getting booted out the door.

April 16, 2025

blog.8r4d.com

I don’t quite know what this site will be yet, but I have this writing itch that needs to be scratched, a yearning that can’t be sated with social media, so I expect I will find an excuse to put words here sooner than later.

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